All Across America 2005 Update

For those of you following along with my travel plans, I have some excellent news regarding this year’s trip across these glorious United States.

I am employed by a Public Broadcasting Station (NPR, PBS affiliate) and we produce our own programming. Typically these shows highlight various aspects of Erie or the broader Pennsylvania region, however I have submitted a proposal to do a documentary on US Route 20, America’s longest road, and I’ve received approval to go ahead with the project.

So beginning in June my co-worker and friend, Tim Rensel, and myself will be heading up to Boston to begin the trip. As noted in the map below, the trip is going to basically be divided into three parts. The first part is just taking the Saturday to cruise up to Boston, where Rt 20 begins, right near the very church where Paul Revere began the Midnight Ride. Seemed like quite the fitting place to begin such an adventure. Basically the documentary is going to focus on the American experience, highlighting everything from baseball to rock n’ roll to Midwest campfires, the goal here is to capture that very real but elusively intangible aspect of existence that is so unique to this land. We’re shooting the thing over two and a half weeks, which will take us from the East Coast, along the Great Lakes, over the Plains, through the Rockies and ending in Newport, Oregon, right on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

I plan to spend a few days in Portland afterwards, getting a feel for what that city is all about as I have this amazing yearning to live there one day, hopefully one day soon. Then I plan to camp in Northern California for a bit, meet up with some friends and head to Lake Tahoe before making the trip back.

I’m quite excited about this whole thing, particularly as my gas, car rental and accomodations are going to be taken care of for the first leg and documentary portions of the trip, as it’s a company affair.

If anyone reading this knows anything about Rt 20 and would like to comment, please, feel free to click buttons.

This map really impresses me. When you told me about Route 20 I had no idea it stretched across the entire breadth of the country… incredible. This is proper travelling. And you get to go to Lake Tahoe again so soon. It’s not fair! I want to go too. If you need to take any action shots of foreign girls, I’ll be there!!

One of my biggest dreams is to walk across America. It might take me 10 years, but I’ve been itching to do this since I was about 20 years old. My ideal goal is to walk, accompanied perhaps by a donkey to carry my tent and pack and a goat to make milk for us all and a dog to whimper and cower when we’re in danger. Perhaps we’d all hop on a freight train now and then to give us a break.

Campfires and cooking beans over the open fire and a bottle of wine and meeting the locals and traveling hippies and Eurotrash oh it will be amazing.

At some point in the Rockies I just want to build a small cabin, just large enough for me and mine, and grow a garden and rest for the summer there, eating my own vegetables and making cheese from the goat’s milk and come harvest I’ll have a giant feast before making double time over the Arizona Rocky Mountain foothills and then down into Southern California for the winter.

Then I’ll trek back over to New Mexico and give my goat and donkey and dog a big farewell and leave them with some poor family who needs them and I’ll catch a bus back to wherever it is I’m from at the time. Or maybe I’ll just stay there and live with that family, with no internet and no job, just working the land and dying a happy old man.

aw, i want a goat – goats are awesome. we have a baby horse here whose mom died, so he has a companion goat. it has big floppy ears and a perpetually amused/mischievous look in its eyes, and i want to steal it.

anyway. i’m very familiar with the stretch of route 20 that goes from massachusetts through new york, but i’ve never stayed on it past the western new york border. the part i’ve driven more times than i can count is beautiful in many places, but it can make you really lonely if you don’t have the right mindset. a lot of the places along the road look like they had their heyday a century or two ago, and the world has moved on around them, and they’ve been forgotten. you’ve got to remind yourself you’re only half an hour from the interstate in most places, because it can feel like you’ve fallen into the void.

i’ll be interested to hear about your drive, and to learn whether the sights get any less depressing on the way to the pacific.

no one is more jealous than i am, sir. imagine the beginning of the crystal clear pepsi song, and that’s when i want to go on a hike or a road trip. if i wait a month or so, i fear this intense feeling will fade. it may just grow, i know, but it’s never been this big, but it seems so fragile and so i smother it with so much attention that it skews the reality of the feeling and i worry. it’s almost like my newborn child.